The new Chicago Bulls played well for three quarters Saturday in their first game at the United Center since Thursday’s trade-deadline fire sale.
They hustled and rebounded and showed some grit, like when Matas Buzelis tried to wrestle the ball from the Denver Nuggets’ mountain man, 6-foot-11 Jonas Valančiūnas, during a dead-ball timeout in the second quarter.
It was man-child against beast, and Buzelis would give no quarter.
The Bulls eventually collapsed in a 136-120 loss to the Nuggets before a sellout crowd of 20,939, but the start of the latest rebuild that can’t be called a rebuild was off to an interesting first step nonetheless.
“It was definitely hard to sleep last night,” guard Collin Sexton said. “I was so ready, I was super, super excited. So today was definitely a good day.”
Sexton, one of the seven new players who took the court Saturday, scored 17 points in his debut after coming over from the Charlotte Hornets in the Coby White trade. Buzelis led the Bulls with 21 points, including four 3-pointers, and Guerschon Yabusele, the former New York Knick, scored 12 on four 3s.
The Bulls took a seven-point lead into the fourth quarter before the Nuggets scored the first 12 points of a 24-4 run that sealed it. The Bulls were held without a field goal in the fourth until Buzelis’ 3 at the halfway mark. Nuggets center Nikola Jokić had a triple-double with 22 points, 14 rebounds and 17 assists, passing Oscar Robertson on the all-time list with the 182nd triple-double of his career.
The Bulls (24-29) have lost seven of their last eight games since briefly going over the .500 mark and have given up 130 points or more in three of their last four games. They fell a game behind the Hornets for 10th place in the Eastern Conference and find themselves on the outside looking in for the play-in tournament.
“We’ve got to get much better defensively,” coach Billy Donovan said, though he cut the players some slack since it was the first time the Chicago 7 had played together.
The Expenda-Bulls aren’t willing to feed into the rebuild narrative.
Photos: Denver Nuggets 136, Chicago Bulls 120
“We definitely can be very special,” Sexton said. “I feel like for us to have one walk-through and to go out there pretty much jelling and making the right reads and doing this together. … It was super fun. At the end of the day, I know something good is coming.”
Sexton has taken it upon himself to serve as the de facto social chairman, saying it’s his personality to get the guys together to bond. They’ll head on a mini-trip Monday with a game in New York against the Brooklyn Nets, followed by Wednesday’s matchup against the Boston Celtics and old friend Nikola Vučević. Then comes the All-Star break and the second-half auditions to find out who will stay and who will go.
Donovan said it’s still strange to walk into the locker room.
“The first guy I see is Vooch, and he’s not there,” he said.
Isaac Okoro moved into Vučević’s locker, and some others moved around as well. The Bulls began to deal with the reality that new veteran leadership must emerge.
Perhaps the player making the toughest transition is Buzelis, who is suddenly expected to be the focus of the offense with former teammates gone and Josh Giddey sitting out with a left hamstring strain.
Donovan said Buzelis got his first “taste of this (league) as a business” and was “still processing” what had happened.
“It’s tough, of course, but at the end of the day you’ve just got to accept what happens,” Buzelis said. “That’s just what it is. I’m happy to see these guys here. I think we’ve got something special and we can make it work, but it’s tough, losing all my brothers.
“It is what it is, and you’ve got to accept it. … Those guys are always going to be part of my circle. They impacted me as a player. I’m never going to forget the relationships I’ve built with them over the years. They were great vets to me.”
The Bulls are no doubt in a rebuild, even as management prefers to call it “a stage.” But Donovan is not coaching like someone who is interested in tanking for a better draft pick, and the players aren’t accepting that notion.
“Coach made it a point to say that if we want to win, then that’s what we’re going to do,” guard Rob Dillingham said. “I want to win. I don’t play games to lose.”
Dillingham, acquired from the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Ayo Dosunmu deal, played 22 minutes and scored nine points with four assists, including some nice lob passes.
While the players are all too young to know much about this team’s history, the Bulls had a famous episode in the 1985-86 season when they were accused of trying to tank it for the draft. The one accusing them was none other than star Michael Jordan, who was returning from a broken foot and was placed on a minutes limit.
Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf had said in December 1985 that he wouldn’t allow tanking.
“That’s losing, and I don’t like losing on purpose,” Reinsdorf said. “I don’t ever want to be party to losing on purpose. Losing breeds losing, and pretty soon you’re losing respect for yourself.”
But the story took a wild turn when Jordan eventually came back from the injury that spring and fought with management over the minutes restriction, claiming the Bulls were trying to lose.
“Losing games on purpose reflects what kind of person you really are,” Jordan said. “No one should ever try to lose to get something better. You should always try to make the best with what you have. If they really wanted to make the playoffs, they’d have me in there whenever we had a chance to win a game.”
General manager Jerry Krause then criticized Jordan in a comment that would haunt him for years.
“Jerry Reinsdorf is running this franchise,” Krause said. “No one player is bigger than the franchise, no matter who he is.”
That, of course, was the season Jordan scored an NBA-record 63 points in a double-overtime loss to the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. If there was one player bigger than the Bulls franchise, it was Jordan.
Times change, but 40 years later, some are thinking the Bulls need to tank to get a better pick next summer. But the new Bulls aren’t buying it.
“We want to win every game,” Buzelis said.